Contractual Labours
Praveen Vahinipati
(Querist) 07 August 2009
This query is : Resolved
is loading & unloading work is casual/temporary for transport company ?
If yes then plz tell me can any transport company can engage contractual labours for its loading & unloading works?
A V Vishal
(Expert) 07 August 2009
It is difficult to guage the intention behind the question.
Casual labour refers to labour whose employment is intermittent, Sporadic or extends over short period or continued from one work to another. Labour of this kind is normally recruited from the nearest available source. They are not ordinarily liable to transfer. The conditions applicable to permanent and temporary staff do not apply to casual labour.
Temporary labour is employable in industry for work of a purely temporary nature or as a temporary substitute of a permanent worker who is absent.
Contract labour is usable only in activities which do not form the normal part of an industry's main functions. Both these provisions of law are based on the need to prevent adventurous employers who tend to resort to these types of employment to deny permanency and other fringe benefits of permanency to temporary and contract labour. Normally, resort to such labour is done in the areas of house-keeping and sanitation, pollution control, security services, canteen etc. and the contractor gets these assignments done on an ongoing basis, but supervised by the management. Similar is the case when time-bound, penalty-oriented jobs are being done by an employer or when there is unstructured absenteeism' deliberately resorted to by permanent workers. In all these cases, it is seen that the quantum of work done by contract labour is invariably more than that done by similarly employed permanent workmen.
Going by the definitions of Casaul & temporary labour, I feel there is nothing wrong if the transport company engages labour on contract basis for its laoding and unloading job.
